NJ Transit 'in great peril,' won't meet safety system deadline, former official says

The Positive Train Control system (PTC) uses GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor trains, and automatically enforce speed limits, and emergency stops. By Frank Pompa and Ramon Padilla, USA TODAY

Executive director blames contractor, says system will be finished next year

NJ Transit’s former chief compliance officer said Friday that the agency “is in great peril” and will likely fail to meet a December 2018 deadline to install a safety system that could have prevented last year’s fatal crash in Hoboken.

Todd Barretta, who was fired this month, told lawmakers in a hearing in Trenton that agency leaders consistently tried to suppress his warnings about safety and cultural problems and said Executive Director Steve Santoro is not qualified to lead the agency.

In his testimony to the Senate Legislative Oversight and Assembly Judiciary committees, Barretta painted a picture of an agency with a baked-in resistance to change that retaliated against employees who spoke up about misconduct. The agency showed little tolerance for his own efforts to question its culture, he said.

“I want to help cast the light on the things that are very wrong,” Barretta testified.

NJ Transit is one of the largest providers of bus, rail and light rail transit. It operates a fleet of more than 2,000 buses and 700 trains. Nearly 223 million trips are taken on the system yearly.

Barretta said the agency is losing so many people to retirement and to other transit agencies, notably Metro-North, that it is in danger of losing the kind of institutional knowledge it needs to operate safely.

Those include managers who were tasked with training 1,100 agency employees on positive train control, the collision-avoidance system the agency is required to install by the end of next year.

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But the agency is so far behind on its progress on installing the system, it isn’t likely to meet that deadline, Barretta testified.

Far behind schedule

NJ Transit’s most recent quarterly report to the Federal Railroad Administration on its positive train control progress confirms that the agency has a lot of catching up to do.

As of the end of June, the agency had trained only 69 of its 1,100 employees who require training.

It had equipped only 13 out of 440 locomotives that need to be equipped.

It had installed only 11 out of the 124 radio towers fully installed and equipped to operate the system.

Out of its 11 lines that need positive train control, the agency has begun installing it on only one, the Morristown Line.

None of the 326 miles of track the agency operates currently has the system functioning.

One bright spot: The agency has acquired radio frequencies that allow the system to operate in the 16 counties where it needs them.

Santoro blamed the lag in the agency’s work on positive train control on its contractor, Parsons Transportation, and its subcontractor, Alstom. Santoro said the companies had fallen behind on installing the equipment on the trains.

He said the companies had promised to address the problem by the end of this month, with a plan to get the project back on schedule.

“It is our expectation we will meet the 2018 deadline,” he said.

Barretta called the systems running the railroad “antiquated and out of date.”

“I would prefer not to ride the system,” Barretta testified.

Santoro testified that Barretta had been suspended for “significant misuse” of his company vehicle and had been terminated.

He also questioned Barretta’s qualifications to judge his fitness to lead the agency.

“Mr. Barretta's known me for a few months,” Santoro said. “How he can make that allegation is interesting.”

'One giant, runaway train'

Barretta, who had been on the job for six months, told lawmakers that the agency is “one giant, runaway train” that thrives on “silence and affiliation” and where outsiders are ousted “for any reason, or no reason.”

“I quickly learned I joined an embattled agency,” he said, “not accepting of any corrective course.”

Barretta said he was fired for failure to return his company laptop, even though he has a receipt showing that he’d turned it in.

He said Santoro personally told him not to put anything in writing and that “we don’t need a gotcha guy.”

Barretta said he was instructed to back off. “I was told I was completely out of my lane,” he said.

He said that, eventually, he was cut off from interaction with agency staff and not invited to participate in meetings.

He also said he was never given a budget to carry out his work as compliance officer, which includes making sure that NJ Transit is meeting its regulatory requirements as well as following its own internal policies.

The agency “made it virtually impossible” for him to do his job, he testified.

Barretta said he was demoted just before he went on vacation with his son. He was told the agency needed "someone with more experience in public agency culture."

When he returned, he was fired.

A pattern of retaliation

Safety wasn’t the only issue raised at Friday’s hearing.

Employment attorney Nancy Smith testified that the agency had retaliated against women and minority employees who had made discrimination complaints, and accused the state Attorney General’s Office of ignoring the problem.

“The attorney general should stop defending the indefensible,” she said. “It is a travesty.”

Sharon Lauchaire, acting spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office, responded by saying it will address the matter in court.

"The testimony today was from a plaintiff’s attorney advocating on behalf of clients concerning litigation against NJ Transit," she said. "This office does not comment on pending litigation, but instead addresses such matters in court.”

Smith, who won a $5.8 million settlement against NJ Transit in 2012 on behalf of 10 African-American agency police officers, called the agency’s culture “toxic, corrupt, sexist and racist.”

She said her clients were called racial slurs by supervisors, and nothing was done when they complained about it.

“They were subject to daily racist humiliations,” she said. “Not one of them ever got remedied.”

In a more recent case, Smith said, an African-American woman supervisor had endured harassment from a white male subordinate who would wear a T-shirt with an image of Hillary Clinton behind bars and the words “Lock Her Up.” The subordinate would wave a Donald Trump face mask in her face every day before last year’s presidential election, Smith testified.

The black supervisor filed a complaint about the man’s behavior. He, in turn filed a complaint against her.

“Guess what complaint they investigated first?” Smith said. “We don’t have to guess. He posted it on Facebook.”

Smith said she represented a woman who has worked for the agency for 27 years, yet was transferred to work in “a rat-infested warehouse” when she filed a complaint.

Another employee, who sustained a back injury that made it difficult for her to drive, was ordered to commute 67 miles each way to work in a conference room.

“Who in their right mind will complain?” Smith said. “The wrongdoers will openly retaliate against you.”